John Abraham: I have signed up for action.

John Abraham: I have signed up for action. If I have to break my bones, so be it

Being an action hero is no mean feat. It’s not just about chases, chainsaws and fists of fury.

And it’s definitely not for men and women who shudder to break a few of their own bones to show heroic daredevilry on screen. John Abraham, who stops at nothing to pack the perfect punch into his heavy-weight roles, tells us that action needs as much or more mental training as physical power. He has given his ‘blood’ (literally) and sweat for his role in his upcoming film ‘Rocky Handsome’. He tells us, “Action is just the icing on the cake. Director Nishikant Kamat and I were very sure that we wanted hand-to-hand combat kind of raw sequences in the film. We wanted to make the audiences’ jaw drop. I had to learn a special art form called Aikido and Hapkido, for which I had to be trained in Thailand.”

The actor stayed there in a shanty, and travelled by Tuk-Tuk (local transport) to the training ground where top fighters would come in from Germany, Austria and USA. He explains, “There I wasn’t John Abraham, the actor; I was like anybody else learning an art from a teacher. I would train for 14 hours until I dropped. During my rehearsal, I shot some sequences, and when I showed those to Nishi (Nishikant), he was shocked. There are eight unbelievable action sequences in this film. We couldn’t benchmark it with any other film, because we haven’t seen action like this in our movies.” For the kind of bone-cracking action he does, how many of his own bones has Action Abraham broken? “Many,” he exclaims with pride and excitement. He continues, “While shooting in Budapest for Force 2, I broke my knee, but I didn’t want to stop shooting. I went to the hospital, where they did a procedure on my knee.”

He adds, “My blood type is such that I don’t react to local anaesthesia, and I tried explaining that to the doctor in Hungary. But due to the language problem, I guess he didn’t quite get it. So when he cut my knee open, I could feel the excruciating pain. After six days, I was put on morphine, and sent off with a drain pipe on my knee. I had three surgeries on my knee, I have broken both my legs, I suffered a hairline fracture on both my arms, and I have broken my wrists, and cracked my skull.” The hunky actor exclaims that he takes all this in his stride as the role is always paramount for him. John says, “Whenever anyone tells me that they feel sorry for me, I tell them… I have signed up for action, if I have to break my bones, so be it. I love this space. For a brilliant role, I can bulk up, lose weight, or break some more bones, if I have to. After watching Rocky Handsome, I’m sure even women will find the action hot.”